“Two District Men Sentenced to 12-Year Prison Terms On Carjacking and Robbery Charges”

Robert Jeter, 19, and Davon Watkins, 18, both from Washington, D.C., were each sentenced today to 12 years in prison for carjacking one victim and committing an armed robbery against another victim within a matter of hours, U.S. Attorney Ronald C. Machen Jr. announced.

Jeter and Watkins pled guilty in October 2012 in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. The Honorable Gerald I. Fisher sentenced them to seven years in prison on the carjacking charge and an additional five years for the armed robbery.

According to the government’s evidence, the defendants approached the carjacking victim at about 10:30 p.m. on June 21, 2012 as he was walking from his car in a parking lot behind 1400 block of Irving Street NW. Watkins put a gun to the victim’s head while Jeter took the victim’s wallet and cell phone. Watkins then demanded the victim’s car keys. Watkins and Jeter then got into the victim’s car and fled the scene.

About six hours later, at about 4:15 a.m. on June 22, 2012, Jeter and Watkins approached the armed robbery victim as he was walking on Mount Pleasant Street NW. They knocked the victim to the ground, put guns to his head, and took his wallet and cell phone.

About 15 minutes after the armed robbery, police spotted the car taken in the earlier carjacking. The defendants ultimately abandoned the car and fled on foot. They were apprehended in the 1100 block of Clifton Street NW. The armed robbery victim’s cell phone was found in the center console of the stolen car. Fingerprint and DNA evidence analyzed by the D.C. Forensics Laboratory tied Jeter and Watkins to the stolen car.

In announcing the sentences, U.S. Attorney Machen commended the efforts of the detectives, officers, crime scene technicians, and forensic analysts who investigated the case for the Metropolitan Police Department. He also acknowledged those who worked on the case from the U.S. Attorney’s Office, including Victim Witness Advocate Jennifer Clark, and Assistant U.S. Attorneys Allison Barlotta, Vivien Cockburn, Bridget Fitzpatrick, and Jonathan Kravis, who investigated and obtained the indictment in the case.

For Saudi Arabia, maybe. But is there another advanced industrialized democracy that would impose a harsher sentence? America puts a larger percentage of its population in prison than any other country (we’re now up to 1 in 50 adult males behind bars at all times), and yet it’s still popular to complain that we are “too soft” on crime.

Maybe it’s time to stop doubling down on the mindless “tough on crime” rhetoric, and instead look to other, more successful countries to see what actually *works* to create a better society.

If you think about what makes boys from one neighborhood have a 1-in-3 lifetime chance of becoming a felon, while kids from other neighborhoods have less than a 1-in-1000 chance, then you’re on your way to actually addressing the problem, rather than just smugly demonizing individuals.